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How to Keep Your Spirits High When Life Offers a Dare and Experience Happiness, Peace, Harmony and Unlimited Potentiality.

Laughter and joy are joined together at the hip. Laughing heartily, whether it is because of hearing a joke or for no reason as we do in Laughter Yoga, creates a cascade of reactions in the body.

Laughter eases the production of the stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenalin and replaces them with the “feel good” hormones such as the endorphins. This state of “feeling good” allows us to make better choices in our lives. We can more easily let go of unhealthy stressful reactions to the many stress inducing stimuli in our busy 21^st century lifestyles.

Stress, as we know, has been implicated in many conditions. Stress can exacerbate or make worse a condition we may have. Conversely, laughter, joy and feeling good can ease or help to relieve the many conditions that modern humans are prey to, whether it be cancer, heart disease, diabetes or even the common cold.

Finding a way to feel good allows our immune function to be operating at a higher, more optimum level. In the years since I started Laughter Yoga with five people in a Mumbai park in 1995, I have seen and heard of many stories of recovery from dis-ease, of the easing of pain, of Laughter Yoga practitioners finding joy in their lives.

Laughter Yoga helped me to transcend my judgmental mind and find my true nature, my meaning and purpose of life. It not only changed my life, but also has inspired tens of thousands of people to cope with impediments and enlighten them about the inner spirit of laughter which is one’s ability not only to laugh at the best times in life, but also to keep the spirits high when life offers a dare.

Whether we know it or not, every aspect of our life is influenced by certain universal principles. You may call them spiritual laws or universal laws. You may have noticed there are times when you don’t have to struggle hard and things come easy in life.

Then there are times when certain good or bad things happen and one just does not know the reason and gets quite perplexed. This is akin to the natural and effortless working of the Universe.

Therefore, if we understand and imbibe these principles on the whole, we can live a life of complete flow without asking too many Hows and Whys. It will help the logical mind to accept what’s not working and why we face problems in life which are incomprehensible and make us upset and angry.

What cannot be explained logically can be understood by these spiritual principles. If we align ourselves to these principles, we can experience moments of happiness, peace, harmony and unlimited potentiality.

In times of difficulty, it is not easy to remain calm, but by imbibing the inner spirit of Laughter Yoga, we can cultivate a positive mental attitude and an understanding based on unconditional love, forgiveness, generosity and compassion. It allows virtues of patience and tolerance to emerge in the forefront. Laughter helps people to develop a state of emotional fluidity where worries and intense goals that have driven their lives become less important.

It is important that as we seek our happiness, we must be mindful of bringing happiness to others, too. Laughter has taught me the true meaning of spirituality, that is –”if you can raise your spirits by yourself and raise someone else’s spirits, you are spiritual.”

In The Zen of Joy, written by my personally trained Certified Laughter Yoga Teacher, Matti Anttila, you will discover tools and techniques or “protocols” that support and nourish this “Inner Spirit of Laughter.” The Zen of Joy Protocols are complementary to Laughter Yoga. They help to systematically build an inner joy that serves as building blocks to finding our calm, undisturbed centre in the middle of storms of everyday life.

Just like Laughter Yoga is an efficient form of exercise (One minute of hearty laughter is the equivalent of 10 minutes on a treadmill as reported by Dr. Fry in the Journal of Psychology, 1938), The Zen of Joy protocols are time-efficient. They are designed so that the busiest of us can implement them and thereby gain their benefits.

We do not all have many hours a day to devote to spiritual practice. These protocols start with literally a few minutes a day, slowly building positive habits to as little as 22 and a half minutes a day to as much time as one needs or wants.

These protocols can quickly produce immediate results while at the same time teasing us of their long-term potential benefits if practiced faithfully. “Rewiring the Brain for Joy and Bliss” is in itself a joyous journey. Because we can feel the joy immediately, we are more easily motivated to continue the practice. We are painlessly asked to take “baby steps,” allowing joy to seep into our cells at a speed that is comfortable for us.

The Zen of Joy may well prove to be a “Journey of Joy” as well as potentially allowing us to reach our full potential as loving, spiritual, awakening humans learning more and more to dance blissfully and cooperatively and ushering in a new era for our new century.

In Joy and Laughter,

Dr. Madan Kataria, Founder of Laughter Yoga,

Author of: Laugh For No Reason and

The Inner Spirit of Laughter, Five Secrets from the Laughing Guru

http://www.laughteryoga.org/ Mumbai, India, March 2012